More catching up

I saw a few headlines that I wanted to capture and make comments about.

The EPA has concluded that greenhouse gases pose a threat to the nation’s health. If upheld, this would require regulations to rein in emissions. I can hear Republicans’ heads swelling at the thought of government ‘intrusion’ into business decisions. Hey, if emissions are so good for us, why don’t we have ‘tailpipe bars’? It’s just what plants inhale, after all.

Colorado’s health care commission is set to report to the legislature. What’s at stake? Hundreds of thousands of uninsured and underinsured Colorado citizens. What did citizens overwhelmingly recommend to the commission? Single-payer care. What will we get? Well, nothing this year as even Gov. Ritter seems too scared to act on one of our most pressing issues. Which tells me the Governor and others are likely receiving signals that Democrats will win even more State House and Senate seats; at the least, they seem unlikely to lose enough to switch control back to the kids (Republicans). Ritter has said he’s hesitant to implement a plan while Democrats look likely to win back the White House. He doesn’t want to burden Washington with another state health care plan with no federal infrastructure. Um, Governor? Maybe 20 different plans will drive home the necessity of implementing a federal single-payer system. Let’s do what’s good for Coloradans and let the feds work their own issues out, huh?

Finally, the energy industry in Colorado is threatening to take their ball home and not let us play with them anymore. Cry babies, the lot of them. What’s got their diapers in a twist? “Colorado’s oil and gas industry is hopping mad about new energy development regulations being written by the state…” ‘”If the rules were approved as proposed, “We would be very, very disappointed,” Collins said. “I’d feel aggrieved that our industry was not taken into account.”’

That’s correct: all the mean Democrats never let the poor, abused extractive industry put in their opinion on what the rules should be. Here’s the real problem, ya’ whiners: Gov. Owens and the previous joke of a state legislature allowed, nay invited, your industry to walk all over the interests of the citizens of this state for eight years. My opinion wasn’t taken into account to any realistic degree prior to this.

But let me put this another way: take your freaking ball home and go drill in someone else’s state. My state would be better for it. The future does not lie in your direction and I know that irritates and scares the crap out of you, but the sooner you realize it, the better off we’ll all be.  Which reminds me, the Saturday Rocky Mountain News had a good article about renewable energy yesterday I want to write about.  Next post.

Sound bites

I just read this over at SquareState. Part of me applauds Rep. Udall for making the trip to Afghanistan to get a better idea of what conditions might actually be like over there. Another part can’t give a shit less. It’s all words – Democratic politicians just want to make enough noise in the press to make it seem like they really care a lick about what’s going on in the region. If they really felt that Afghanistan and Pakistan posed the kind of threat they talk about, they would have forced Bush’s hand by now. But somehow, they view the situation as politically expedient for themselves as well.

And note: despite Udall’s mention of Pakistan, where was the announcement of a plan to do something about that country? A nation (with a former U.S.-supported dictator re-exerting dictatorial rule) that we arm and supply to the teeth has a governmental crisis on its hands. Oh, and they have nuclear weapons at their disposal. But where is the rebuke to our Dear Leader to stop bullshitting about Iran and get serious about Pakistan’s crisis?

Another thing that has bothered me about the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle is the amount of taxpayer dollars being funneled into the toilet. You’ve probably heard that argument before, but here’s my more personal take on it. Every dollar we spend over there is one less dollar for our single-payer health care system. It’s one less dollar for public education funding preschool through college. It’s one less dollar going to fight the greatest threat that we are facing: global warming. Folks, this planet will change in ways we can’t imagine. The Earth my children (if I ever have any) grow up in will not be recognizable to you or I today. And every dollar we waste on financing mercenaries and fraud is a dollar that should have gone to mitigate our horrendous treatment of this planet.

Every dollar we waste to fund an illegal occupation means we’ll have to waste more and more dollars to react to the next series of terrorist attacks. And we’ll face more attacks, but not for the reasons the fringe right would have you believe. We’ll be attacked again because we have a military presence in other people’s countries. And forget the bullshit that neocons spout about that’s the responsibility of being a superpower. Why shouldn’t being a superpower include supporting the will of the world’s populace? The vast majority of us just want to live our lives. Why do we continue to prop up dictators and governments hostile to their people’s interests? That’s why America’s standing in the world is in the toilet.

So stop sending out releases like this, Rep. Udall.  Or if you truly believe the words you put in them, then pay attention to the people you’re paid to represent.  Take action and show some guts.  If you don’t, why should I donate to your campaign?  Why should I vote for you?

Short space/science notes

The asteroid that led the way for mammalian dominance hit more water than previously thought.  Results include: 6.5 times more water vapor was jettisoned into the atmosphere and sulfur rich sediments were also included.  The upshot of the sulfur sediments?  They fell out of the atmosphere as acid rain.  They also would have contributed to a climate cooling process.  Bio-engineers are discussing releasing sulfur compounds into our atmosphere now to cool our climate down.  I’m not convinced acid rain is something we want more of.

An asteroid between 500 feet and 2,000 feet in diameter is going to pass close to Earth in four nights’ time.  How close?  Just 100,000 miles further than our moon.  A rock that size hitting Earth would devastate a region.  If it hit in the ocean, a massive tsunami would be generated.  Thank goodness for the Catalina Sky Survey – still working to locate and track these objects.  (This particular rock was found last October.)

Cool new site

http://cohousedems.typepad.com/

Catching up

I’m back from my conference.  I did two presentations – both went very well.  I met some good contacts and was introduced to students at my alma mater.  I’ve never had so much to do outside the conference – restaurants by the hundreds, good music everywhere.  I can’t wait to go back with just friends.  I tried switching which card the room was charged too and they didn’t remove it from the initial card presented.  I have to give the hotel a call and take care of that.

When I got there, I discovered my laptop wasn’t working.  It’s a dinosaur, but up until then had worked just fine.  It acted as though a key was being held down – system beeps during start-up, start menu not staying open.  Pretty frustrating since one of my presentations wasn’t finished at arrival.  I finally fixed it – but I’m not quite sure how.  The hotel wanted to charge $15 per day of internet wifi access.  Yeah right.  With the laptop acting up, I didn’t want to take it to the convention center.

All that to say I didn’t do any blogging while away.  I also didn’t have access to email – yikes!  So I’m catching up on this.  I kept track of national news, but nothing local.  So here’s the first thing I found:

Rep. Udall (CO) has introduced a bill that might do some good things for consumers using credit cards.  He’d like to include H.R. 1461 to the economic stimulus bill (as of the 21st of Jan.).  The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2007 would, among other things, require advance notice of increases in card interest rates, impose a freeze of interest rate terms and fees on canceled cards, prohibit penalties for on-time payments (thank you!!!), prohibit fees for non-use of cards, and prohibit over-the-limit fees for creditor-approved transactions.

While these steps don’t go far enough, in my opinion, they sound like good steps.  I’ve written about this before: the frame that needs to be applied to this situation is one of taxes being applied to consumers that are not directly approved by legislation.  It could be argued that by inaction, Congress approves of banks taking advantage of us, but that’s not how things work at the end of the day.

I think interest rates should be capped at a more realistic level.  I also think that since banks couldn’t do a good enough job discriminating people who posed too high a risk to the products they were seeking, Congress should intervene there too.  It’s not a stretch to argue that its in the interest of the entire economy, and by extension the world economy, that banks shouldn’t be allowed to run around without oversight.  It’s clear to me there hasn’t been enough oversight of banks for some time.  It’s time for Congress to exercise their duly appointed powers.

Work and play

One year ago, I had a paper written and had started on a presentation for a conference.  Then the sponsor revoked travel authorization.  No presentation for me.  So I wanted and needed to present something this year.  It turns out I got the chance to do two presentations – one for each group I work for.

When I submitted abstracts last summer, I was very excited about the thought of presenting.  I need to write papers and present results to continue to advance in my career.

On a slight tangent, I took an Oceanography course last fall.  We were responsible for writing seven research papers during the semester, which really wore me down.  It was a very aggressive schedule and we had to use software and datasets that had high learning curves associated with them.  What ended up happening was I spent a large amount of time writing for class and letting my work papers slide.

So crunch time came today: the papers had to be submitted to make it into the official program.  One paper was in pretty good shape, as I’ve worked on that material for almost four years now.  The other paper was much more raw and unpolished.  I finished writing a draft this morning and sent it to my boss.  I met up with him earlier this afternoon and he laid down the hammer on me.  He basically said it was too raw and as written shouldn’t be submitted to the official program.  I would still present results, but he didn’t want what I had written to be in the permanent records.

He correctly summed up the paper by saying it lacked coherency; too many stray thoughts pushed together.  As I said, he was correct in his appraisal – I was thinking the same thing as I sent it to him.  But to hear something like that from your boss is fairly disheartening.  In the immediate aftermath, my confidence is shaken.  I know I put off writing it too long and couldn’t recover in time, but….

So he’s working on it now, hoping to finish it by the submission deadline later tonight.  He also made it clear that him fixing the paper really doesn’t help me.  I need to work on fixing it so I learn how to write better.  I’m debating whether I should look at a version that he uploads.  I need the experience in continuing to work on it.

Anyway, I’ve been crazy busy the past few weeks and am glad the conference is almost here.  I really just want to finish up with everything and put it behind me at this point.  I haven’t been able to write here about the things I’ve been keeping track of.  And it’s likely I won’t be able to for another week or so.  But, there’s a time for work and a time for play.

Speaking of which…

‘Freak ocean wave’

Having just completed a masters level course in oceanography, my curiosity was piqued by this research article write-up at ScienceBlogs.

Waves in the ocean are forced by surface winds on daily to multi-year time scales. This article deals with waves on a climatic scale, under the influence of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. The MJO is a trigger for El Nino conditions. It’s a one to two month change in the pattern of rainfall and surface winds on a planetary scale.

The MJO exhibits itself by creating a train of waves that travel along the equator (they actually can’t move north or south from the Equator, they’re trapped). These waves are known as Kelvin waves. Their influence extends only through the top 50-100m of the ocean due to fluid dynamical processes. The interesting thing about these waves, and why the ‘freak’ nomenclature has been assigned, is they are moving below the surface of the ocean. Way below: 1000m to 1 mile in depth! They’re similarly equatorially trapped, like their surface residing cousins, but they are exerting influence at some serious depths.

Waves are anomalous perturbations from a mean state. Think of the mean state as a straight line that describes a field’s long-term behavior, like the height of sea level. Anomalies, or deviations, from this mean state exist as waves: troughs and ridges. Waves exist for another good reason: they transport things across the medium they’re a part of. In the case of the ocean, they’re responsible for transferring heat from the equator pole-ward. They also transport momentum and things like carbon dioxide and other molecules from source regions like the atmosphere. In this case, the deep-Kelvin waves are transferring energy from the surface to the ocean interior. Not at all the usual case, so far as I’m aware.

Shifty Schaffer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwJL_akKpRM

Energy in Colorado

According to a report (Connecting Colorado’s Renewable Resources to the Markets (PDF)) released by the Governor’s Energy Office, Colorado has the potential to generate a considerable amount of its energy via renewable energy sources. This couldn’t come at a more desperate time, and make no mistake about it, times are desperate.

Our consumerist society is addicted to fossil fuel use. It’s a circular system: the fossil fuels allowed us to go a little further with what we had, do a little more. The more we could do, the more we did. And our use of fossil fuels increased. Which allowed us to do even more. And so on. In the near future, we’re going to face a world where the use of fossil fuels will no longer be a viable solution. Actually, we’re probably already there.

So what does the report do for us? It provides the first in-depth census of potential renewable energy sources on a state-wide, even regional level. And there’s plenty of renewable energy available to us. If just wind and solar are considered, over 100 Giga-Watts (GW) of generating capacity are present. Currently, Colorado’s peak energy load during the summer is approximately 11GW. The math is pretty simple: there is almost 10 times as much renewable energy available as the state’s residents use at peak. A number of estimates were made to get to those numbers: only 2% of Generation Development Areas that could provide space for solar infrastructure would be developed; estimates about technologies and efficiencies were made.

This news is incredible. Colorado could become a net exporter of renewable energy to the power hungry south and southwest regions of the U.S. It also means that the need for a fossil fuel-based society could become a 20th century phenomenon. Many things have to happen before that, but the promise of an energy portfolio that doesn’t pose health risks to us or damage the environment or force us to spend billions of dollars to protect infrastructure will make more people take notice of the potential.

As we head into 2008, our economy teeters on recession, if it’s not already in one. Colorado never really recovered from the 2001 recession – job growth has been weak, wages stagnant, the cost of living skyrocketing. The development of a new energy economy could lessen the impacts of the upcoming downturn. It will necessitate innovation and an educated workforce. See, opportunities abound. Coloradans need to decide which path they want to go down: the one we’ve been on or a new path that holds promise of a better way of life. If we choose a new energy portfolio, Coloradans need to make sure politicians understand that and act accordingly.

As I make my way through the report, I’ll discuss it in more detail.

Digital Camera

I don’t have one and I want to buy one.  Maybe one like this.

Not for that advertised price, however.  Microcenter had it on special for $129.99 around X-Mas time.  $149.99 with a $30 rebate?  I don’t think so.  I’ll wait until I see a better price.

Sigh.